Olive House Snake

Appearance

All members of the genus Boaedon are small snakes, generally attaining lengths of little more than 4 feet (120 cm) in length. Sexually dimorphic, females are always larger than males who attain lengths of approx. 2 feet (60 cm) there is some variance between species and between geographic locales of species.
Adult female "patternless" Boaedon capensis

Overall body colouration is typically sandy brown to black but green, orange, red and a variety of other locale specific variations do exist. All species are nocturnal by nature and present with vertically elliptic pupils, they also present with a v-shaped set of stripes stretching from the rostral scale through the eye to the rear of the head. Some specimens have very pale stripes and in others they are not present at all. Body pattern varies between species, B. olivaceus, B. mentalis & B. fuliginosus are all naturally pattern less, B. capensis & B. maculatus both have patternless variants and B. lineatus typically has lateral striping running the length of the body. These are highly variable snakes and confusion is common when attempting to distinguish them from one another.

Distribution

Distribution: Uganda, Rwanda, Zaire, Angola, W/C/E Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire), Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin ?, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia, Central African Republic.